Soon the town awoke, and the morning hubbub began. Long trains of camels came in, and the swarthy Bedawîn wrangled with the soldiers at the gate. The market-girls from Bethlehem appeared under David’s Tower, and, as the crowd thickened, black priests in saucepan-like hats jostled sickly Jews, with fur caps, long lovelocks, and dirty gabardines. The heavily-shod, unkempt Russian pilgrims mingled with sleek Rabbis, with Europeans, and German residents; Armenians with apple-cheeks and broad red sashes, and fierce Kurds with long moustachios and swords, were also numerous.
So motley a scene as that which is presented daily in David Street and in the market-place under David’s Tower, is perhaps to be found nowhere else. The chatter of the market-people, the shouting of the camel-drivers, the tinkling of bells, mingle with the long cry of the naked derwish, as he wanders, holding his tin pan for alms, and praising unceasingly “the Eternal God.” The scene is most remarkable in the morning, before the glare of the sun, beating down on the stone city, has driven its inhabitants into the shadow; for, later on, the white houses, white chalk hills, and dull grey domes, present a truly unattractive prospect; but about eight a.m. the market still lies in cool shadow, under the huge ochre-coloured tower, with a background of cypresses, and of white walls belonging to the Bible Warehouse. The foreground is composed of a tawny group of camels lying down, donkeys bringing in vegetables or carrying out rubbish, and women in blue and red dresses slashed with yellow, their dark faces and long eyes (tinged with blue) shrouded in white veils, which are fringed perhaps with black or red. Soldiers in black, and Softas in spotless robes, are haggling about their change, or praying in public undisturbed by the din. Horsemen ride by in red boots with red saddles, and spears fifteen feet long. The Greek Patriarch walks past on a visit, preceded by his macebearers and attended by his secretary. Up the narrow street comes the hearse of a famous Moslem, followed by a long procession of women, in white “izars,” which envelop the whole figure, swelling out like balloons, and leaving only the black mask of the face-veil visible; their voices are raised in the high-pitched tremulous ululation which is alike their cry for the dead and their note of joy for the living. Next, perhaps, follows a regiment of sturdy infantry marching back to the castle, with a colonel on a prancing grey—men who have shown their mettle since then, and fat, unwieldy officers, who have perhaps broken down under the strain of campaigning. Their bugles blow a monotonous tune, to which the drums keep time, and the men tread, not in step, but in good cadence to the music. If it be Easter, the native crowd is mingled with the hosts of Armenian and Russian pilgrims, the first ruddy and stalwart, their women handsome and black-eyed, the men fierce and dark; the Russians, yet stronger in build and more barbarian in air, distinguished from every other nationality by their unkempt beards, their long locks, their great fur caps, and boots. Not less distinct are the Spanish, Mughrabee, Russian, and German Jews, each marked by a peculiar and characteristic physiognomy.
Jerusalem is a city of contrasts, and differs widely from Damascus, not merely because it is a stone town in mountains, whilst the latter is a mud city in a plain, but because, while in Damascus Moslem religion and Oriental custom are unmixed with any foreign element, in Jerusalem every form of religion, every nationality of East and West, is represented at one time.
Jerusalem is quite a small town, the circumference of its walls being only two miles and three-quarters; yet within this space it contains a population of 20,000 souls. Ten sects or religions are established in it, and, if their various sub-divisions are counted, they amount to a total of twenty-four, more than half of which are Christian. Prophets and visionaries of no particular sect are also not wanting at any time in the Holy City.
Jerusalem is a very ugly city. It is badly built of mean stone houses perched on the slope of the watershed, and seems in constant danger of sliding into the Kedron Valley. Beautiful bits of architecture are to be admired in its interior—the Gothic façade of the Holy Sepulchre, the grand walls of the Temple, the glowing interior of the mosque; the view towards the east is also very fine, a long wall of far-off mountains, with a foreground of embattled parapets and slender minarets standing out against the distance. Yet, with all this, the city as a whole is not beautiful; its flat-roofed houses and dirty lanes are neither pleasing nor healthy, and the surrounding chalk hills are barren and shapeless. Shechem is a fine well-watered city. Damascus is bedded in gardens, and bristles with minarets, but there is nothing in the site or architecture of Jerusalem, as a whole, which can save it from the imputation of ugliness.
Going down David Street and through the fruit bazaar, with its background of arches, wooden balconies, marble portals brown with age, and fragments of Crusading architecture, you come at length through a bye-lane to the Jews’ wailing-place—a narrow street with the high Temple rampart rising on the east. All along the narrow court the Jews are crowded on Friday. The scene is striking from the great size and strength of the mighty stones, which rise without door or window up to the domes and cypresses above, suggesting how utterly the original worshippers are cast out, by men of alien race and faith, as they here congregate to bewail “our people that are wanderers, our priests that are defiled, our Temple that is cast down.”
Nearest to us stood the Pharisees from Germany, the Ashkenazi Jews, dressed in their best; the old men with grey locks and thin grey beards, on their heads the high black velvet cap edged with fur, their lovelocks curling on either side of their lank faces, their robes long gabardines of many colours; the younger men had blue-black hair, and pale strongly-marked features; here and there one saw a richly-dressed boy, a few little red-haired children, and occasionally an old woman, their faces all stamped with that subtle likeness which betrays the Jews in any country, and in any dress.
There were bits of colour in these groups which would have delighted Rembrandt. An aged white-haired man, in a mulberry gabardine and black velvet cap, contrasted with the black satin and fur of his next neighbour, and in front of both was a third in a green dress. All these dark rich costumes were set in a warm background of tawny colour made by the great wall towering above.
Beyond the Ashkenazi were the Spanish and Mughrabee Jews, in quieter colours with black turbans, brown-eyed and more dignified in bearing. Presently came in a hulking fellow in citron-coloured coat and blue trousers, with a tall black pointed lambs-wool cap—a Russian Jew. The little Pharisees seemed to dwindle beside this giant, and his handsome, fresh-coloured face, blue eyes, and russet beard, seemed hardly to allow of his being one of the same nation; but it is the greatest peculiarity of the Jews that while never intermarrying, they yet approach in appearance most nearly the natives of the country in which they live, without entirely losing national traits of a distinctive character—a striking proof of the influence of climate and surroundings on race.
The emotion of a few of the worshippers was affecting. Here an aged woman in a white veil stood mute, her eyes fixed on the great stones of the Eternal House; there an elder leant his tearful face against the wall, his lips moving, his prayer-book unheeded. But as a rule the crowd maintained the tranquillity of an English congregation, and their dress and appearance was rather ludicrous than otherwise. The Rabbi read verse by verse the touching lamentation service, leaning his book on the wall, and lighted by two or three ordinary candle-lanterns placed before him. The assembly gave the responses in the peculiar manner of the Jews, which reminds one of the buzzing of a swarm of flies when disturbed, and they swayed their bodies all the time with the extraordinary bobbing motion which always accompanies their prayers.